At the end of the Great War, the residents of Springfield Terrace, Dublin, celebrate the return of local hero Jack Harte and his boyhood friend Barney. None is more overjoyed than Jack's wife, Julia - though her friend Sarah, woken to another world by service at gracious Glenivy House, is already dissatisfied with the Terrace and feckless Barney. Dublin in the wake of the Easter Rising has become a place of spies, factions and secrets - a world that offers plenty of scope for Sarah's ruthless ambition. But even clever Sarah has not foreseen the tragedy she will precipitate... Throughout the 1920s and '30s, the women of Springfield Terrace support each other through poverty and loss, hope, hardship and disaster. But it will take a new generation to heal the bitterness of Sarah's betrayal...